swizzle said:
My uncle was telling me about a guy who takes all of his black sand and dries it out really good. Once its bone dry he takes a magnet over the whole thing and the magnetite sticks to the magnet and whats left is gold.
Good in theory, but in practice, its a little more complicated than that. Not all that glitters is gold and not all that is black is iron. It sounds like that "guy" is kind of wasteful and I'd sure like to have his black sand if its anything like here in British Columbia where about 50% of the gold contains ferrous material. Which makes it influenced by magnetic fields and causes it to appear in different colors including black, (like black sand).
Would it pay to wire a few neodymiums to the bottom say under a waterfall or close to it and just go back every once in a while and clean the magnets off? Maybe attach a few magnets onto a larger metal plate to increase the range of the magnet and collect even more?
Depends on the area and overhead. Magnets aren't that cheap and you would have to find just the right spot to place them where they wouldn't come loose and end up somewhere down stream. Attaching magnets to a metal, (steel, or iron) plate would help, but only within limits, which is why car stereo speakers don't increase in magnetic field strength beyond a certain point when a larger piece of steel is added to them, (thus the reason for ever larger magnets being used for larger speakers.)
Then there are the environmental considerations. I don't know what the laws are in the U.S., but anything that disrupts the watercourse and effects fish habitat here, is a no no. If I got caught doing that sort of thing, it could mean the loss of my vehicle, equipment and a good sized fine, (maybe even the possible threat of a prison term).
Would it be possible to get an ounce of gold out of say a 5 gallon bucket of black sand this way or is this another wild pipe dream? I think hiking a few miles of stream in the spring and periodical dropping these "gold traps" every so often and checking on them in the fall might get you enough to add a few hundred or maybe even a few thousand dollars to your income every year, depending on the scale of the project and the amount of time devoted to it. Any thoughts? Swizzle
If they were still there in the fall to retrieve you might get black sand, part of which may contain an alloy of iron and gold. But then you would have to separate it through leaching or some other method. the Magnets wouldn't pick up any gold by itself, so I wouldn't think of it as a "gold trap". If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it.
F.
